Two-thirds of the foreign prisoners who were mistakenly released back onto the
streets are still in Britain, six years after the scandal cost the home
secretary Charles Clarke his job.

The much criticised UK Border Agency promised to toughen up its procedures after it was revealed 1,013 immigrants had been released from jail without being considered for deportation in 2006.

But hundreds are still being allowed to remain while thousands more are taking years to process, a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has discovered.

The report found that only 397 had been removed, 57 had completely gone missing and the rest had been allowed to stay or were still being dealt with.

"Six years is far too long for this situation to be resolved and these cases should have been concluded long ago," the committee concluded.

A year after the debacle, in which Mr Clarke resigned, the UK Borders Act introduced an "automatic deportation" provision for any non-EU citizen who has served a 12-month sentence or more to be receive a removal notice.

Yet the report, the third into the UKBA, also found that 10 per cent of the 5,010 foreign national prisoners released last year were allowed to remain.

More than a 1,000 were still fighting deportation although on what grounds it was not known.

It also found that 2,670 released prisoners were still fighting deportation after being released more than two years ago.

Almost 20,000 asylum cases also remain unresolved and some 120,000 immigration cases are being written off because the applicant can no longer be found, it added.

Keith Vaz, the committee's chairman, said: "The reputation of the Home Office, and by extension, the UK Government, is being tarnished by the inability of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to fulfil its basic functions.

"The foreign national prisoner issue and the asylum backlog were scandals which first broke in 2006, six years ago.

"UKBA appears unable to focus on its key task of tracking and removing illegal immigrants, overstayers or bogus students from the country."

The agency was also criticised for its "bunker mentality" and its confusing and misleading method of recording data.

"The 'agency' must rid itself of its bunker mentality and focus on ensuring that Parliament and the public understands its work," the MPs said.

"Confusion over figures only risks suspicion that the 'agency' is attempting to mislead Parliament and the public over its performance and effectiveness.

"The only way the Home Office can allay and remove these fears is to clean up and clarify all the figures that are used in these reports."

The committee called for the authorities to ensure foreign defendants have the necessary travel documentation as soon as they are sentenced in a bid to see them deported once they have served their jail term.

Immigration minister Damian Green said the UKBA had improved from a state of "complete chaos" when the Government took office two years ago.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Green said: "It is getting better slowly, probably too slowly than most people would want - some areas are getting better faster than other areas.

"The asylum service is immeasurably much better than it was three or four years ago.

"We start deportation action on foreign national prisoners now 18 months before the end of their sentence. As a result of that, last year we removed over 4,500 foreign criminals, and 45% of those were by the end of their sentence."

"In the coming months, we will be changing immigration laws to cut the abuse of the Human Rights Act, which has been used by far too many people to delay the process of removal."